MHP, in the context of the abortion debate, makes the wrong-headed claim that “life begins” when parents feel it does, not when science says. That’s moronic. A less moronic thing for her to have said would be that “personhood” begins when parents say it does. This would still be wrong for all sorts of sound Thomist reasons involving a zygote having the Aristotelian form of a rational animal, but it’s not moronic within MHP’s secular framework. Further, in the abortion debate, “life” has unfortunately become a colloquial synonym for “personhood” for some reason, so MHP’s point, in fairness, isn’t the moronic one about life (which obviously begins at conception), just the false position that personhood doesn’t, which she’d need some Thomism to rebut properly. (Non-Thomist pro-lifers have their own arguments for zygote personhood, but they sadly fail to impress, much as I wish more pro-life arguments were available, and much as I welcome them as allies.)

However, as Father John Zuhlsdorf has pointed out, the *logical implication* of what MHP is saying here about personhood is that if the parents don’t “feel” that personhood begins until the age of two, or until junior pays off his student loans after making mummy and daddy proud at Harvard, or whenever, then that’s a pretty horrifying definition of personhood.

But in fairness to MHP (of whom I am no fan at all), she just isn’t talking about that in this clip. Nowhere does she say anything about newborns. She is talking about fetuses. Watch the clip. Now, the logical implications of her statement are clear to Fr. Z, to you, and to me. But it seems obvious that MHP is oblivious to them, just as she is of course oblivious to the arguments for the personhood of the zygote stemming from the zygote’s having “rational animal” as its formal cause.

Your blog post here, Mark, gives the impression that MHP directly said something like “newborns aren’t people,” in, e.g., the context of a discussion of partial birth abortion. She didn’t say anything like that. She is pro-choice and her worldview is toxic. But pro-lifers get NOWHERE by distorting our opponents. I respectfully suggest this post be withdrawn.

alishadefreitas

Agreed.

lavallette

An example of the “intellectual” capacities of those who as social commentators with a microphone, claim the right to tell us and influence what and how to think. And these are the very people who claim that it is pro life people that are “scientific troglodytes” and misogynists while at the same time promoting murder even under the existing laws. BTW how is this different than an political regime declaring an entire class of people as “untermenschen” and thus expendable.

PS: Godwin’s law is a liberal progressive artifice to preempt the legitimacy of the most reasonably comparisons with the Nazi regime and their tactics, thus relieving them of the moral and intellectual obligation to counter and rebut the comparison.